Twilio Cloud Communications - Discover Our Web Services API for Making & Receiving Phone Calls & Text Messages, Cloud Telephony

Improve Your Memory with Simolio - Steve Castle Wins a Netbook!

Twilio's usefulness in the business context is simple: save money on the core telephony activities you engage in for business every day with a Twilio-powered PBX, IVR, answering service, call routing or other solution - at a fraction of the cost. 

While we've got many customers using Twilio in their businesses, we thought it would be fun to lighten things up a bit so last week we encouraged developers to explore the possibility of using Twilio for Fun & Games in last week's Netbook Contest category.

Winner Week #6: Simolio by Steve Castle

Based on the popular 1980s game Simon (play online), Simolio is a memory game where you call in and attempt to memorize and repeat patterns of numbers or sounds.

To give it a try, simply dial (866) 583-6913 with pin 1089-3785 and follow the prompts to begin the game.

Level 1 - Numbers

Level 2 - Sound effects

Level 3 - DTMF telephone tones

Week #7 Category: Get Together Now!

Have you ever tried to coordinate a large group of people for a meeting, meal, or other event?  Getting people together can be challenging, but with Twilio you can create all sorts of tools to make that process easier and more efficient.  This week, we challenge Twilio developers to submit applications that help people coordinate their plans.  Here are some ideas to get you started:

• An outbound application that calls all your guests to take a poll of their top restaurant choice, among a set of options.
• An inbound application that consults the calendars of your colleagues and proposes the best meeting times to the group.
• An application that checks your friend's travel plans (Dopplr) and gives you a call when you are in the same city, proposing you dine at places you both like (Yelp).
• An application that polls your CRM for sales leads nearby who you haven't met with in awhile, to help you fill time with cold calls between meetings.
• Automated reminders to employees of when they're scheduled to work, like Twilio customer Juma Ventures
• An outbound application to check with members of community groups, sports teams, and other organizations to confirm attendance for meetings, games, etc.
• Organizing community outreach and political canvassing

If these ideas sound interesting to you, or you've cooked up one of your own, head on over to our contest page to learn more and submit your application when you're ready.  The deadline for submissions is midnight on Sunday, July 5th, and we'll announce the winner the next day!

Google Voice Launch Imminent: Witnessing A Milestone in Telephony

by Evan Cooke, Twilio Co-Founder & CTO

This week is a big week for telephony.  After years of development, Google Voice is preparing to launch to the general public.

The launch is a milestone, in many respects:

1. It demonstrates that there is still innovation in the phone 130 years after the first telephone call.
2. It illustrates the benefits of tight integration between the web and the traditional phone network.
3. It introduces IVR concepts to a broader customer audience.  The idea that anyone can provision phone numbers (like DNS names) and route calls between them with user-defined logic is incredibly powerful.

While Google Voice isn’t explicitly extensible, you can route your Twilio calls to and from your Google Voice account.  Imagine you want to add a more complex routing function that depends on your local database; you could route certain calls from your Google Voice account to your Twilio provisioned number and handle the logic with Twilio.

Build Your Own Google Voice with Twilio

Twilio also offers all the basic building blocks needed to create your own mini-Google Voice:

•     Inbound/Outbound calling
•     Keypad Input and conditional call routing
•     Call screening
•     Voicemail recording
•     Speech-to-Text transcription

If you have cool mashups you’ve build with Google Voice and Twilio, please let us know: help@twilio.com

Alex Polvi Wins Twilio Netbook Contest Week #5 - Open Source It!

Congratulations to Alex Polvi, winner of this week's Netbook Contest in the Open Source It category!

Alex built Twilio + Nagios, an open sourced tool that integrates Twilio with the popular monitoring tool Nagios, which notifies webmasters when site and web services go down.

How Twilio + Nagios Works

As Alex describes on Github:

When nagios determines it is the time to send a notification it sends data to the nagios_twilio_pager.py script. This will fire off a request to Twilio, telling it to hit a specific URL for the host that had the problem. Twilio will then hit a url on the twilio_nagios responder, which will parse the nagios config and objects file to look up the current state. It then returns that information in Twilio XML, and the sysadmin gets alerted by a robot voice. Success.

Announcing Week #6 Category: Fun & Games

We've seen many examples of how Twilio can be used to support core functions of business, and now it's time to loosen up a little bit and have some fun!  What, you were already having fun because creating telephony apps with Twilio is so dang easy?  Good!

This week we challenge you to come up with a creative new use for Twilio that will entertain, delight, or amaze us.  Jokes, games, scavenger hunts -- if you can dream it up, you can do it and we're looking forward to featuring ALL the submissions on our blog over the coming weeks to share the joy and light-hearted good times with the entire Twilio developer community.

As always, there is a Netbook at stake here.  If you've been looking for the motivation to play with Twilio and create your first application, now is your chance to jump in and have some fun!

All the information about the contest can be found here, or if you're ready to submit head over here.

Ahoy Hoy Seattle! Join Twilio at nPost Networking Tomorrow Night @ Columbia City Theater

Come say hello, grab some Twilio stickers, and hang out with us tomorrow starting at 6pm at the nPost Startup Networkig & Demo event, at the Columbia City Theater.  Not only will you get to hear from our CEO Jeff Lawson; come check out presenting startups including: Mpire, Gist, eVenues, and ViaFo.

The event is organized by Nathan Kaiser, who writes the popular Pacific Northwest startup blog nPost, and we're excited to be a part of it.  To register, add yourself to the guest list.  The first 150 attendees to arrive also get a free drink ticket.

Other Happenings This Week

Can't make it to the nPost event in Seattle? Twilio is going to be at two other events focused on cloud computing this week in San Francisco.

 Wednesday, June 24th - CloudCamp San Francisco

CloudCamp is a cloud computing "unconference", that offers an unstructured format where individuals contribute their thoughts on various topics, and gather attendees to their sessions based on topical interest.

Thursday, June 25th - GigaOm's Structure '09

Structure is a conference for cloud computing and infrastructure, and this year's focus is on Putting the Cloud to Work.  Come find us at our table right near the front door to say hi and learn more about Twilio firsthand from the founders.

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Do you know of an event you think Twilio should be attending?  We'd love to be a part of your tweetups, conferences, and events - let us know at help@twilio.com

Magic Call Button Launches Simple Click-to-Call Service Using Twilio

Have you ever wished for a way to add a branded "call now" or other click-to-call button to your website, blog, or email?

Today, Twilio customer Tradewinds Advertising announced a new product: Magic Call Button.  Magic Call Button pairs branded click-to-call buttons and web forms to add a clear call to action to website quickly and easily.

From their press release today, some impressive numbers reveal the impact of adding click-to-call functionality to website:

Formal research to evaluate the impact of click-to-call technology has concluded the following: click-to-call may increase online revenues up to 45%, reduce website abandonment by 20-30%, improve inbound inquiries by 25-35%, and improve customer satisfaction up to 88% (sources include Forrester.com).

Uses for Magic Call Button

Click this button to see the matching form (one of many templates):

Don't worry, this won't make a phone call unless you fill out the form...

How Click to Call Works

Anthony Stevens, an active member of the Twilio developer community, has created several demos showing how to use Twilio in the past, and one of them contains a fantastic diagram of how click-to-call works:

It would take a whole other blog post to feature all that Anthony has done, but do check out his blog (there are code samples and a bunch of other good stuff there) and we look forward to bring him on a guest blogger in the future.

If you looking for a quick click-to-call solution, give Magic Call Button a try.  If you're looking to build you own, come discover Twilio and what you can create with our telephony API!  Congratulations to Victoria and the whole team at Tradewinds for getting this launched.

Evan Cooke Codes Up Twiliobot for Google Wave Hack-a-thon

A couple weeks ago, Jeff and Evan represented Twilio in the Google App Engine pod at Google I/O. Their mission was to talk with developers, and share ideas for using Twilio with Google App Engine to build powerful voice applications. 

Two surprises (free Gphone! Google Wave launch!) and one Hack-a-thon later, twiliobot was up and running.

Twiliobot for Google Wave in Action

Guest Post at googlewavdev.blogspot.com

Here's an excerpt from Evan's post over on the Google Wave Dev blog:

One of the powerful features of Google Wave is the ease with which developers can integrate it with existing APIs. Lars and Stephanie demonstrated several Wave extensions that leverage other APIs such as Mappy using the Google Maps API and Rosy using the Google Language API. At the Post-I/O hackathon, I used the Twilio API to extend Wave into the world of telephony.

The result was twiliobot, a robot written in Python that uses the Twilio Phone API to create "voice waves." When a user adds twiliobot to a wave, the robot automatically finds and transforms the phone numbers in that wave into click-to-call links. When a user clicks a link, a call is placed to the user's cell phone or landline and to the phone number in the link and the two are connected. The subsequent phone conversation can then be recorded, transcribed, and automatically inserted into the wave as text with a link to the audio of the conversation.

For more details, check out Evan's full post on the Google Wave developer blog.  Thank you Google for this opportunity to attend the hackathon and experiment with the Google Wave API!

Call the Milk Wins Netbook Week #4 - This Week: Open Source It!

Do you find yourself thinking of things to add to your to-do list at the most inconvenient times and places?  Do you wish you could capture you to do list as you think of it, instead of trying force it out of your brain and onto paper when you're in a rush? If you strive to capture your to do list (and cross items off) you're going to love this week's winner: CallTheMilk.

CallTheMilk was created by Brian "Beans" Levine to solve these problems. 

The service integrates the power of voice with the simplicity and utility of Remember the Milk, a popular tool for capturing to-do lists and providing contextual reminders (especially among Getting Things Done fans like myself).

Getting Set Up with CallTheMilk

1. Apply for your RTM api key. It's instant and free.
2. Tell CallTheMilk your api key and cell phone number
3. Call (760) 406-8607 and speak the new task. CallTheMilk recognizes you from your caller id, and adds the new task right away!

Check out this demo video demonstrating how CallTheMilk works:

Week #5 Challenge: Open Source It!

We've seen many fantastic submissions and winners who have made their code available to developers through open source, and we encourage you to make a contribution to the open source community using Twilio.  This category is wide open, so if you've submitted in a previous week and are willing to open source your code we'd love to have you back to give it another try.  Click here to submit

P.S.  Kyle Conroy wrote a PHP Twilio response library to help you get started, and we'd love to see (hint hint) a Ruby library one of these days...

Using Windows Azure & Twilio to Impress the Ladies, with CIA Pickup

Move over pickup artists, there's a new game in town and it uses... you guessed it... Twilio to enable what might be most clever geeky pickup tactic I've seen yet (and I've seen a few).  As Steve Marx of the Windows Azure team explains in his blog, the story is simple.  You want to tell a girl that you work for the CIA to get her number, but you need a way to prove you're actually an agent.

Enter The CIA Pickup.

With this service you give out one Toll Free number (866) 961-1673 powered by Twilio, and your unique Agent Identifier Number (AIN).  Then, when she calls the number you'll receive her number by email.  Check out this deni Steve made, to show how it works:

<p><p><p><p><a href="http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-US&playlist=videoByUuids:uuids:5ba226a3-c3ba-452d-9baf-9a10b083ffd4&showPlaylist=true&from=msnvideo" target="_new" title="The CIA Pickup - a Windows Azure Sample">Video: The CIA Pickup - a Windows Azure Sample</a></p></p></p></p>

Here's how it went for Kevin and I:

Download the Code

Download the source code here: http://smarxblogstorage.blob.core.windows.net/files/TheCIAPickup_source.zip

Steve wants you to note that to run the sample, you’ll need to get your own storage account, Twilio account, Windows Live Application ID, etc.  All the configuration settings you need to fill in are located in ServiceConfiguration.cscfg.

Michael Kimsal Presents Twilio at TriPUG

What could be finer than waking up to see a user-created video about Twilio?  Yep you guessed right, pretty much nothing could top it - my day is made and its only 8:00am.

Michael Kimsal presented Twilio to the attendees of the Triangle PHP Users Group ((TriPUG) and posted this video on his blog to share with the world.  (Please visit his blog to view the video).

Michael and crew - we're listening to your feedback and questions, and we're working hard to add new features to Twilio to satisfy some of the use cases you talked about!

Curious How Twilio Works?

Here's the bare bones explanation for how Twilio works, in case you've got an opportunity like Michael to introduce Twilio to developers you know at usergroups, events like BarCamp, etc.

Answers to Every STS Question Ever Asked!

STS stands for Seattle Tech Startups, and it is the most subscribed and in-depth conversation about the tech startup community in Seattle.  It has its fair share of controversy, and like any community it has some characteristics that are consistently amusing (such as common questions).  Last night, our CEO Jeff Lawson gave a talk on cloud computing.  Even though we weren't there, the tweets coming from attendees told us all we needed to know:

Jeff's Slide Deck

Answers To Every Seattle Tech Startups Question Ever Asked

View more Microsoft Word documents from twilio.

And for those of you who read text (like indexing robots):

What kind of company?
Delaware C Corp

Which coffee shop?
The one in your neighborhood

Go Big or Lifestyle?
Big

Which web design firm?
Design Commission

Colo or Cloud?
Cloud

PHP, Ruby, Java or Python?
The one you know.

Subversion or Git?
The one you know.

MySQL, Postgres, or MSSQL?
The one you know.

Windows or Mac?
The one yo MAC.

Is the Seattle Startup Index fair?
Life's not fair.

Who makes good screencasts?
Lilipip

Unsubscribe.
Read the footer.

Should I leave Microsoft?
If you have to ask, probably not.

Twitter?
Yes.

Angel Networks?
No.

Hops 'n Chops?
Yes.

Should I predicate my success on Apple treating me fairly?
No.

Should I raise VC money?
Depends.

Fries with that?
Yes.

Dave Matthews band?
No.

Syrup or Jelly?
Syrup.

Quiznos or Subway?
Quiznos

I have a legal question...
Talk to an f'ing lawyer

What's the most important thing?
Your network.

I don't have a network.
Start building one.

Am I likely to get rich building a startup?
Probably not.

Am I likely to feel SATISFIED from doing a startup?
YES.